The class ends. None of us say anything about what happened. We go down to the art classroom. The teacher is dark-skinned, medium height, and skinny. His necktie is loose. He’s jumpy. He has a copy of the picture magazine al-Musawwar in his hand. He reads us the story of a thirteen-year-old boy from the magazine. “The boy tells his father, ‘It’s our shame that we stay here in Damascus while Palestine is burning. I’ll get together a team of commandos from my friends, and we’ll all get together in the town square.’ The father admired his son’s precocious manhood, so he kissed him and said, ‘We’ll go together, my son. And let the first volunteers in your team be your younger brothers.’ ”
He continues reading as he walks around the room: “The father joined the rescue operation forces and the son put together a team of thirty children. They snuck their way from the border all the way to Jerusalem. They attacked a Jewish stronghold in the King Dzavid section of the city. The youngest of them was infiltrating mine fields and setting them off. They almost took control of three houses that Jewish forces had held using assault rifles. They managed to blow up two of them. When the boy attacked the third, holding his rifle in one hand and a grenade in another, he shouted: ‘You Haganah, if you’re men, show your faces and fight me man to man.’ No one dared come out, but a single bullet shot out and lodged in his back, killing him once and for all.”
The teacher goes to the blackboard, and says: “Everyone draw what you liked best from the story.” I draw the father and his son. The picture doesn’t seem very good to me. I erase the whole thing. I draw an open field with plants and trees. I try to figure out what mines look like and where I should put them. The teacher walks around behind us. He looks over what we draw. He leans over and draws me a tree. He pats me on the back to encourage me. I draw a boy at the edge of the field.
The teacher asks me and three others to stay after class. He takes us out to the school’s garden. We sit down on a green grassy spot under some trees. He promises that he is going to turn us into artists. He tells us to draw a branch of a tree with all its leaves. I carefully trace the shape of the branch and the leaves with my pencil. I fill up the whole page. I go back over the lines with the ink pen. He says: “That’s enough for today.”
I take my satchel and leave the school. I go along the street that leads to the Jewish school. I walk along the colored gravel. I stop at the corner. I look to the left. The branches of the trees are bare. I step over red and yellow flowers. I make it to the pavement in front of our old house. The windows of our apartment are open. You can see somebody’s shadow moving. A steamroller parks up a few steps ahead. A side of the road has been paved with asphalt. The smell of burning tar. A pile of gravel is in front of the house. The stones shine in the moonlight. We stand on top of it. We rub stones together. Colored sparks come off them. My father calls me and I rush back inside. I go to the bathroom first. I wash my face and my feet. I go and find him at the window. The darkness is lifting. Mother is singing as she brings in coffee.
I go back to where the street begins and from there to the square. I cross it, passing in front of Hajj Abdel ’Alim’s shop. I go back into the alley. I see that father is standing on the balcony. The wide woolen scarf is wrapped around his neck. The big woolen cap covers his head. His neck is twisted towards the top of the alley. As soon as he sees me, he goes back in. I go up the stairs. I open the door with my key. I go into the room. He stands next to the wardrobe, holding the book The Great Star of Knowledge. He doesn’t talk to me.
I put my satchel on the desk. I take out my notebooks. Stacks them up. I watch him from the corner of my eye. He turns around. He opens the book and lays it on the bed. He leaves the room. I steal a look through the crack in the door. I can hear him making dinner in the kitchen. I take the key to our room out of my pocket, and push it into the keyhole. I go over to the bed, and bend over the book. A small booklet is tucked inside its cover. I pick it up to read the name of it. I’m expecting something like “How to Punish an Abusive Child.”
Full Male Potency. I flip through the pages, but I don’t understand a thing, so I put it back in its place.
I go out to the hall. I am looking for him. There is no sign of him in the bathroom or the kitchen. I go back to the hall. The door to the skylight is closed. I go over to Mama Tahiya’s room. The door is closed. I look through the keyhole. As it has been, without a piece of furniture. I go around the table. The door to the guest room is closed. I look through the keyhole. He is sitting on the couch facing me. His head is bowed and he is studying the floor. He raises his hands to his face. Suddenly, he breaks into tears and starts sobbing like a child.
~ ~ ~
He finishes praying the Friday prayer, on top of the bed. He goes back to his corner with a frown, sitting by himself next to the wall. The full-length prayer beads are in his hand. He sticks on the name “the Benevolent,” repeating it.
I hear noise in the alley. I put on my glasses and rush to the balcony. He raises his voice, reciting the names of God without turning to me. His voice is like a warning not to make any noise.
I stop behind the glass pane. The children have paper kites. They’re floating up in the air over the alley in all different sizes and colors. He makes me an orange-colored kite. I go up to the roof of the house with the other children. Everyone has his own kite with him. We hold tight to the string. We throw them in the air. They fly up high.
The children run underneath their hovering kites. They move out of my sight. I go back to the desk. I review the lesson on lengths of measure and use of the compass and ruler. The cry rings out in the alley: “Knife blades and scissors!” I rush back to the balcony. The man is in the middle of the alley behind his sharpener. Samir brings him a lot of knives. He pushes the wheel with his hand to get it spinning. He puts the edge of the blade against it. Sparks come flying off. He grips the handle and moves it sideways to its tip. He lifts it and puts the other side on the wheel. Abdel Hamid shows up, coming from the entrance to the alley. He walks along seriously until he gets to the door of the house. We pass out of the big iron gate. My father clutches a bag of apples to his chest. We walk over a long, dusty path with dead trees on either side. We come to a one-story house. Nurses with huge bodies. One comes to us wearing a long metal chain around her waist. It drags behind her on the bare tiles. Her cracked sandals scrape against the floor. Their heels are striped with black cracks. A long hallway with rows of shut doors on both sides. Some of them have iron doorknobs. Behind them are women wearing strange looks. One of them laughs with loud peals of laughter. She points to a woman who is pale and fat with a face full of pimples, whispering: “Come here.” I grab hold of my father’s hand. An open hall with many beds. Mother is lying on one. She smiles quietly. My father holds the bag of apples out to her. She takes one of them. She wipes it off with her hand and nibbles at its side. She feels my face with her fingers. She asks me about school but doesn’t seem to care. The huge nurse watches us from close by, keeping her eyes on the apples.
His fingers make it to the middle beads on the string. I open the satchel. I get out the marbles that I still have. I am careful to keep all the same kind. Most of them are shaped like balls and are transparent with twisting stripes inside of all different colors. I pick out four that are different shapes and sizes. I put them to one side to change them during the game.